From Prayers of Life. This section sounds like a modern mixture of Jesus calming the storm (Mt 8) and the psalmist’s cry in the night (Ps 6). Quoist then gives us God’s response.
I’m at the end of my rope, Lord.
I am shattered.
I am broken.
Since this morning I have been struggling to escape temptation, which, now wary, now persuasive, now tender, now sensuous, dances before me like a seductive girl at a fair.
I don’t know what to do.
I don’t know where to go.
It spies on me, follows me, engulfs me.
When I leave a room I find it seated and waiting for me in the next.
When I seize a newspaper, there it is, hidden in the words of some innocuous article.
I go out, and see it smiling at me on an unknown face.
I turn away and look at the wall, and it leaps at me from a poster.
I return to work, to find it dozing on my files, and when I gather my papers, it wakes up.
In despair, I take my poor head in my hands, I shut my eyes, to see nothing.
But I discover that it is more lively than ever, comfortably settled within me.
For it is has broken my door open, it has slipped into my body,
my veins,
to the very tips of my fingers.
It has seeped into the crevices of my memory
And sings into the ear of my imagination.
It plays on my nerves as on the strings of a guitar.
I no longer know where I stand, Lord.
I no longer know whether or not I want this sin that beckons to me.
I no longer know whether pursue it or am pursued.
I am dizzy, and the void draws me the way a chasm draws the rash mountaineer who can no longer either advance or retreat.
Lord, Lord, help me.
Son, I am here.
I haven’t left you.
How weak your faith is!
You are too proud.
You still rely on yourself.
…You must surrender yourself to me.
You must realize that you are neither big enough nor strong enough;
You must let yourself be guided like a child,
My little child.
Come, give me your hand, and do not fear.
If there is mire, I will carry you in my arms.
But you must be very, very little,
For the Father carries only little children.
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But I feel like if I let go then I am “giving in” and proving that I don’t belong to Christ. I can’t get past this. I end up in a sin and guilt spiral.